Gene Vs Finny

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The infrastructure of an arch works so that the two supports lean against each other, using the opposing force of each side to remain upright. That is what codependence looks like, and a perfect visualization of Gene and Finny’s friendship in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Finny and Gene exert equal force opposing each other, keeping the friendship upright by lying towards themselves regarding each other. Gene’s side of the arch is built on his insecurity, which both drives and kills his friendship with Finny. Finny’s constant stream of compliments and expressing need for Gene, is a massive ego boost, and effectively keeps the friendship going. Across the book we can see examples of this, like when they are walking back from jumping off …show more content…
you can’t come to the shore with just anybody and you can’t come by yourself, and at this teenage period in life the proper person is your best pal... which is what you are”(Knowles 40). Or when Finny compliments Gene on how smart he is and says “I mean there’s nobody, or hardly anybody that’s as good as you are”(Knowles 50). These allow Gene to lean on Finny as a source of praise to counter his insecurity. And yet that same insecurity keeps Gene from allowing himself to fully be friends with Finny, since his jealousy quickly turns to hatred, building up to the point where Gene feels he must level the playing field and push Finny from the branch. Finny’s side of the arch is much harder to gauge from the text, because the story is told as a flashback of an unreliable narrator, what the reader knows about Finny is only what Gene chooses to remember about him. Gene’s memories portray Finny as perfection, handsome and selfish and incapable of wrongdoing, but not from a viewpoint of attraction or actual fondness, this picture of Finny is most likely a result of unaddressed guilt and grief. The reader can see this in Gene’s last few lines “...my war ended before I ever put on a uniform: I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy …show more content…
Gene puts Finny on a pedestal, the novel acting as a requiem for a perfected version of Finny that Gene made up in his head. But the facts themselves point to Finny being quite a manipulative and insecure person, and the barrage of compliments given to Gene were Finny’s way of keeping Gene under his thumb. Which is why the only time Gene ever sees fear in Finny’s eyes is when Finny begins losing control over Gene, when Gene is on the verge of enlisting. “His eyes turned with an off expression on me. I had never seen such a look at them before”(Knowles 99). Finny savored that control over Gene, so that when faced with the possibility that Gene would betray him and push him from the branch, he immediately gaslights himself into forgetting that Gene pushed the branch, he is too scared to lose that friendship and that control. We see him lying to both himself and others to “protect” Gene. More likely he is protecting this self painted picture of Gene. That is how his side of the arch stays up, lying to himself so desperately and constantly, that it allows him to maintain this image of a friendship he had created for
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